San Gabriel Valley Digest

Pasadena

The Board of Directors voted Tuesday not to extend operation of the downtown Shopper Shuttle bus beyond its termination date of Aug. 3.

David E. Barnhart, traffic and transportation engineer, said the bus carries fewer than 300 passengers a day but costs the city more than $6,000 a week to operate.

The shuttle, which began service last November along Colorado Boulevard and South Lake Avenue, was designed to move shoppers between downtown retail centers, to provide businesses with a marketing tool and to promote car-pooling by assisting employees in getting to restaurants for lunch, he said.

However, Barnhart said that repeated efforts to increase ridership--such as free-ride coupons in local newspapers--failed to reach the generally accepted minimum standard for fixed-route transit of 20 boardings per bus hour, or about 325 boardings a day.

He said that a recent survey of shuttle riders showed that 79% would have made the trip downtown without the Shopper Shuttle and that 67% of those people said they would have used Rapid Transit District buses to make the trip.

The subsidy for the shuttle bus averages $6.50 per boarding, whereas the subsidy for RTD riders in Pasadena ranges between 70 cents and $2 per boarding, Barnhart said.